


The Reaper

by velmaddinkley



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Criticism to the Funeral Industry, Death, Death by Choking, Death by Heart Attack, Death by accidents, Jon is not in this but he briefly adds comments in the end, Mention of gun violence, Nightmares, Original Characters - Freeform, Parallels to Real Life, Parallels to the pandemic and social isolation, Self Isolation, Statement Fic, The End (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, and I picture him reading this in season 1, mentions of child death, there's so many people dying in this one seriously i can't emphasize this enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29986572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velmaddinkley/pseuds/velmaddinkley
Summary: Case #0151503. Statement of Angela Adams, regarding a nightmare she had one night and its posterior impacts. Original statement given March 15th, 2015.





	The Reaper

**Author's Note:**

> a warning: this is kind of a heavy one and it ended up having so many parallels to the social isolation we all have been living so please heed the tags

[CLICK]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Angela Adams, regarding a nightmare she had one night and its posterior impacts. Original statement given March 15th, 2015. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Right, before I start, I should state that I didn’t intend for any of this to happen. You have to believe me on this. I know what it’s going to look like, once I put this in words. I’m aware that it doesn’t look good, which is why I hesitated so much to tell anyone. But I suppose something good can come out of this. My story is, after all, a warning. There is a reason for me to be here, even if I don’t understand it for certain.

Sorry, I’m rambling. People ramble so much when they're scared, don't they? I suppose that must be very annoying to you. But I'm not gonna do that. There's nothing about my past that is relevant to what I have to tell. The nightmares only started about one year ago. My therapist, Genevieve, said it was “nothing to be ashamed about” and “a normal reflex of my reality” - probably related to the fact that I had recently started working as a receptionist at Harris & Thompson Funeral Services. That's when things started to get weird.

I felt weirdly inadequate when I first visited the place. The entrance hall was dusty and very bleak looking, and the huge perpendicular windows didn’t seem to help to brighten up the place. There were bizarre coffin miniature figures on the shelves, and the entire furniture seemed to be a hundred years old. The idea of working in a funeral house creeped me out, but the newspaper’s job section said they were looking for a receptionist and I was desperate to find a job.

I heard steps coming from the door behind the balcony, and when I turned around, I was looking at two old men in identical black robes. They introduced themselves as Harris and Thompson and, much like their furniture, they also looked one hundred years old. When I told them I’d come for the job, they both smiled at each other in a way that told me they hadn’t seen many candidates for that vacancy. They immediately offered me tea and started asking the usual questions about my professional experience and my knowledge on funerary procedures, which was a bit embarrassing. I couldn’t reply to most of those questions.

So I was really surprised when Harris said I could start right on the next day. They must have seen the surprised look on my face, because they asked if there was anything wrong with that. I admitted that I felt insecure and unfit for the job, to which Thompson replied “don’t you worry, child, you have a long training to do, and there is nothing to be scared about.” But I think it was clear that this didn’t ease my worries, and so Harris took a piece of paper and scribbled something down. “What is this?”, I asked. “Our offer”, he said, and showed me the numbers.

I’m not getting into details, but let’s just say that it was a really generous offer to someone who didn’t have much experience in that kind of business. I suppose this could be explained by the fact that I was their only employee - the last one, as they had said, “hadn’t endured the difficulties of the job”, whatever that meant, and they needed someone to take the occupation as soon as possible. So I took it. 

The “long training” Harris had referred to actually lasted less than a week. In my first few days of work, they taught me everything I needed to welcome the clients - but most importantly, as Harris and Thompson said themselves, they taught me how to make the clients go for the highest priced packages. Between you and I, that made me feel a bit guilty. When I started out, I often felt like I was manipulating all those grieving people. But every job has their ups and downs, and in every one of them there are things which you have to learn how to ignore, right? I suppose you do know how that is, don’t you, Head Archivist? That’s what you called yourself, right? There must be so much that you had to learn how to ignore. So I bottled it all up and I caught up very quickly, and I found out that it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. For a wage like that, I couldn’t understand why someone ‘would not endure it’. But honestly, that attitude was mainly a facade. 

The thing about working in a funeral house is that you hear a lot of stories. Whenever a client comes in, you always end up hearing too much. Just like you and the stories you collect, I suppose. Except that you have the privilege to hear from those who lived to tell them. I had to deal with what came afterwards, and that can make you think and imagine too much. Especially when you know it could have been avoided. _Perhaps I wouldn’t have to have sold this coffin if this guy had worn a seatbelt. Perhaps this kid wouldn’t have gotten killed if his parents didn’t keep a gun in the house._ And so on.

Every night, when I laid down to sleep, I didn’t think of them. And yet, in my dreams, I saw myself in their place, feeling what they had felt. It always ended right before I died, and I would wake up startled in my room, with a scream muffled in my throat.

You can imagine it’s not very pleasant, but I decided very quickly that I wouldn’t let this ruin my job. Once again I bottled it up, and tried my best to ignore any stories I heard, but they would always come back to me at night. I think at some point it became clear I was struggling to act naturally in that place. I felt scared, and not to mention, tired from not sleeping at night, but I would never admit something was wrong, and always made sure to clarify to Harris and Thompson that everything was fine. And then they would smile at me, like they were proud of an apprentice.

One Wednesday night, I dreamt that I stood in my living room. The lights were dimmed, and I felt very cold, but everything looked quite normal, except for the weird white light coming from the windows that didn’t quite look like sunlight. I wondered what would be the thing to kill me this time. 

I waited for what it seemed a long time - time is a freaky thing when you’re dreaming, but I swear I could feel every second passing - and nothing happened. I just wandered around there, confused, trying to get the heater to work, trying to find whatever my subconscious had hidden to end me. The light switcher didn’t work; my only source of light was the weird luminosity coming from the window. I searched the flat, wondering if perhaps I was supposed to find something, but there was nothing. Just me in my regular flat.

I sat on the floor and tried to come in terms to what that meant. Maybe nothing had come for me because I was already dead. Maybe it had happened in my sleep, or on the way home - did I even remember this? Coming home after my shift has always felt a bit fuzzy everyday, anyway. Gradually, I realized it made sense. The strange sense of uneasiness, that reality isn’t the same. The cold. And there was also that weird light on the window… Don’t they always say you see a light?

Soon, I began to feel it - the restlessness all over my body, being hit with a wave of that strange, unknown stillness. I didn't want to go, but I couldn't control it. My eyes began to close against my will, and the dark coid I'd been looking at seemed to get even darker. Soon my consciousness would be gone, never to return again.

The light started to feel like I was in the middle of a railway, with a train coming in my direction. To my horror, it was so blinding that it started to force my eyes closed. I stepped back in horror, intending to get inside my room where I couldn’t see it, but the corridors seemed to have no end. I ran until I lost my breath, and when I stopped to catch it, I realized that the light was gone. I allowed myself a moment of relief, until I felt something touching my shoulder.

I turned around, and I was somehow able to make out a figure standing in front of me. It was tall and I think it had its hand reaching to me, as if offering something. I didn’t take it, but now that I think about it, I don’t think I had to. A slicing wind came over me, and I woke up in bed.

From all nightmares I had, this one was the one that felt more real, and also, the last. I didn’t know how terrible they were until I was free from them. Maybe things would be fine, after all. Maybe that weird night had meant something good. Genevieve was certainly glad when I gave her the good news, and encouraged me to not abandon our sessions since it was doing me so good. I didn’t tell her about the weird details in my last dream. I didn’t know how to put that in words, but it was more than that… somehow, it felt wrong to disclose that to someone else.

Still, when she led me to the door, I promised her I would return. I turned around to shake her hand, but I realized she hadn’t stood up yet. Genevieve placed her hand on the left side of her chest, suddenly looking very dizzy and tired. I asked her what was wrong, and she only muttered something about feeling a discomfort in her chest and asked me to ask her secretary for a glass of water. I did that, but when I returned with it, Genevieve looked like she was struggling even more and we decided this could be serious and called an ambulance.

It didn’t take long to arrive, and the paramedics did everything they could, but the doctors said Genevieve was dead before she reached the hospital. A very sudden myocardial infarction. Completely unexpected for someone that young and healthy, and yet, it had happened. Right in front of me.

That was… impacting, to say the least. I mean, sure, I was getting used to seeing dead bodies, but witnessing someone die in front of you is something else. It’s not something you forget easily, but I suppose I could have gotten over it if it hadn’t happened again a couple days after that.

This time, I was in a restaurant. I hardly have the luxury to eat out, but I’d just gotten a pay raise and I wanted to do something nice for myself. I thought it was very weird from Harris & Thompson to give me a raise just after two months of work, but they justified it by saying I was doing “a tremendously good work”. I didn’t understand why they kept complimenting me. I was just doing my job. But hey, that was easy money, right? So I decided not to question them, and went ahead to spoil myself in a rather fancy restaurant.

He was a young boy. Sat with his family on the table right across mine. Probably around sixteen years old or so. Definitely not the age you would expect to die by choking on his own food. I only noticed what was happening when a crowd gathered around the boy, now sprawled on the floor and coughing violently, while his mother desperately tried to do whatever she could, begging someone _, anyone_ to call an ambulance, to help and save her son. He became unresponsive after not so many tries. The ambulance probably arrived after I left - I know it sounds insensitive of me to just leave, but there wasn’t much of what I could do. I decided not to stay to see the end of it, but I didn’t need to. Later, I saw his parents in the funeral house. 

I tried not to overthink the coincidence. Things were supposed to be fine. But it kept happening, and more frequently. A piano that fell on someone right across the street I was walking. Then days later, after I decided that walking to work didn’t feel safe anymore, when someone got run over right in front of the car I was into. Those weeks felt weirdly out of place, because it was like my life was divided in two. At my job, things were as good as normal as they could be, improving each day. But then I would go to the bank, and someone’s phone would explode in their hands. 

It felt incredibly absurd to believe those deaths were somehow connected, but when people start dropping dead wherever you go, it gets really hard to not believe this is somewhat personal. When that woman collapsed in the aisle next to mine in the grocery store, I didn’t even think twice; I quickly bought enough food for three months and locked myself in my flat. I just couldn’t keep that happening.

I called in sick to work and announced that I wouldn’t be able to attend for the next few days. I knew that I’d have to quit if things continued happening like that but I couldn't deal with that now. Harris and Thompson’s reply was that it was alright, there was no reason to worry, for I was such a committed employee, I deserved a rest. 

For a couple of days, it worked. I kept myself busy enough that I had almost forgotten about the deaths. But I started to feel… weak, even after sleeping for hours. Walking from one room to another made me so dizzy that I had to hold onto the walls. It wasn’t hunger - I had plenty enough food, as I said, but no matter how much I ate, it felt like there was something fundamentally lacking. 

And then… It came like a dream at first. I could swear I was dreaming, because it felt so unreal - wandering around the streets like that, with no idea where my legs were taking me. Too weak to resist. When I stopped walking and realized that this was solid reality, I ran home as quickly as I could. But the damage was done. And I profoundly hate to admit this, but I felt immediately less weak after that.

But I figured it would return. I started hiding the keys, and when that didn't work, I piled up chairs in front of the door. But when I lost consciousness of myself again, I always found a way out. This continued for the last two weeks, getting more frequent every time. Everyday I would faint, and then I would see myself wandering. 

The last time it happened was yesterday; I wandered and wandered and wandered, until I got here. I’d never heard of the Magnus Institute before, nor I ever came anywhere near this area. Whatever brought me here... I suspect it's not part of my own mind, but I figured there should be a reason, just like the other times. I was told you collected stories about weird stuff, and well... It seemed wrong not to give mine. 

But most importantly, this story is also a warning. I don't know which one of you it will be. I would tell you to be careful, but I'm really not sure if that can do any help.

Just... please, help me, if you can. I don't appreciate being used like a marionette to prey on the death of others. It's terrifying. If you know a way to stop whatever this is, please let me know. I just want to be free.

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends.

The deaths mentioned by Ms. Adams did happen as stated by her. Tim was able to obtain the police records regarding those occurrences, and apparently they all match her description in precise detail. According to Sasha, there was a Harris & Thompson funerary house, but it seems like it closed off months ago and there is no info contact available, nor any records regarding the existence of its owners.

It certainly hasn’t escaped my attention that this was submitted only a day after the statement given by whoever is under the name of Antonio Blake, in which he proclaims to have... foreseen Gertrude Robinson’s passing. 

Despite what this may seem at surface, I’m more tempted to assume this is a cover up for something else. If Adams caused these deaths by any means, one can assume she could see this statement as a way to cover up. Certainly not a very clever cover up for someone who was able to alter a coroner’s report that indicated natural causes, but still a more plausible assumption than... _(audible disgust)_ deaths being prophesied or brought by curse. 

If both Adams and Blake are involved in whatever this is, we have no reason to assume that any information given by Angela Adam’s about her own identity is true. Martin, however, insisted on searching Angela Adam’s whereabouts - which, predictably, turned to be a dead end, as none of the people close to her haven’t heard from her in months. 

End recording.

[CLICK]

**Author's Note:**

> For the first time I pulled it off to write it in a complete script format :D  
> i apologize if there are any typos, as i don't have a beta. feel free to let me know what you thought of it!!


End file.
